A terrifying creature with giant wings and red eyes rose above the city of Pripyat, where the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was located, in the days before the fateful disaster of April 26, 1986. Several of the workers in the control room of the nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine claimed to have seen the creature that became known as the “Black Bird of Chernobyl”.
Those who saw the creature say they were tormented by terrifying dreams and others believe that the Black Bird of Chernobyl was the creature known as “Mothman”, whose presence meant only one thing: that a catastrophic event is about to happen.
The Black Bird of Chernobyl
Robert Maxwell is the only archaeologist who worked on Chernobyl on two field excursions into the exclusion zone in 2010 and 2012 and there is very little Maxwell doesn’t know about Chernobyl, both in terms of the physical and the supernatural world.
In an interview, Maxwell shared the stories he heard while working in the exclusion zone around the site of the nuclear disaster:
“Legend claims that in the days leading up to April 26, 1986, a supernatural creature was sighted in the sky over Chernobyl by many of the men in the control room. They also claimed to have seen this terrifying creature just before the explosion.
The Black Bird also became one of those legends that are difficult to track down because it is based on the accounts of people who died due to radioactive contamination, but the stories persist to this day.
There are a few versions of the Black Bird story, and the oldest known account appears to have come from 2005.
According to legend, rumors circulated around Chernobyl that five employees saw a large, dark creature with giant wings and fiery red eyes. Chernobyl officials began to share strangely similar experiences and some had horrible nightmares.
The second account I’ve heard of this story comes from 2007, and says that people in and around the power plant began to experience a series of strange events revolving around sightings of a mysterious creature, also described as large and dark, a mutant with large wings and piercing red eyes. People affected by the phenomenon also experienced nightmares and had encounters with the winged creature.
The Black Bird has been described as a creature very similar to the Mothman sightings, and many people believe that the Mothman, as the Black Bird of Chernobyl, are harbingers of tragedy, in the same way that the Banshee was a herald of doom and death for the Celts. These supernatural entities would be drawn to the energy of disasters, just as moths are drawn to a flame, or so the story goes.
Some of the workers reported their bizarre experiences to the facility’s supervisors, but there was very little they could do, even if they were willing to take action. Then disaster struck. Reactor number four at the nuclear power plant exploded on April 26, and two days later the entire city of Pripyat was evacuated.
The Mothman
The Mothman sighting is an enduring mystery that began in November 1967 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, USA.
At the time, more than 100 residents reported seeing what they described as a 6-foot-tall winged creature covered in fur or feathers with a wingspan of up to 10 feet and glowing red eyes.
Then, in December, the suspension bridge over the Ohio River, from Point Pleasant to Gallipolis, collapsed, killing 46 people.
Some reported seeing the Mothman on the bridge just before the collapse. Due to the bridge collapse happening at the same time as the Mothman sightings, inevitably the two events became intertwined.
Today there is even a Mothman statue at Point Pleasant, which is a popular tourist attraction.
A creature similar to the Mothman was also reportedly seen in Germany on September 10, 1978, when a coal mine collapsed in the city of Freiburg, killing several miners.
The story goes that some of the miners, who were supposed to work that day, were startled by the sight and screams of a winged moth-man-like creature perched at the entrance to the mine and waited outside for about an hour, until an underground explosion collapsed the mine. This fact saved their lives and the creature became known as the “Freiburg Shrieker”.
